We often see siblings litigate in California over the allocation of tangible personal property held in the family trust. When Mom and Dad have passed, the tug of war may involve jewelry, paintings, photos, firearms, furniture, saddles, vehicles, table settings – and yes, even a bobble head!
My colleague Kim McGhee recently hosted a fun
Narcotics Anonymous established a revocable trust to manage its literature and other intellectual property assets for the benefit of its many members. A “regional delegate group” filed a petition in Los Angeles probate court claiming that the trustee was breaching its fiduciary duties.
The California Court of Appeal, in Autonomous Region of Narcotics Anonymous v.
Daniel Spector has litigated trust and estate cases in Northern California since the early 1990s. He is now focusing his practice on mediating trust and estate disputes across California, working with Judicate West. Dan is a colleague on the Executive Committee of the Trusts and Estates Section of the California Lawyers Association, and I
We’ve written about how co-trustee conflict fuels California trust litigation and the problem seems to be growing. Trust administration grinds to a halt because a co-trustee (or two or three) is hostile, stubborn, self-serving and/or apathetic. While trusts are supposed to provide a streamlined alternative to a court-supervised probate proceeding, the efficiency may be is
Many family member trustees are uncertain about whether and to what extent they can use trust assets to obtain legal representation. For example, when two parents choose their daughter, upon their incapacity or death, to administer their trust as the successor trustee, the daughter may be unsure whether she can use trust money to hire
Many California trust and estate disputes involve the allocation of real estate amongst several beneficiaries. Mom and Dad, may they rest in peace, owned an upscale home in the Fab 40s neighborhood of East Sacramento, a sweet Tahoe vacation home, and a few rental duplexes, but did not specify how these assets were to
Last week the California Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Barefoot v. Jennings (2020) 8 Cal.5th 822, ruling that a trust beneficiary disinherited in an amendment may contest the amendment’s validity in the probate department of the Superior Court under California Probate Code section 17200.
The Court of Appeal had narrowly construed
This blog post views a trustee’s fee from the beneficiary’s perspective. Under California law, a trustee generally can set his or her own fee and collect it without prior disclosure to the beneficiaries. What can a beneficiary, who sees a hand reaching too greedily in the trust cookie jar, do in response?
We discussed best practices for a trustee when claiming a fee in a prior post and now consider how a beneficiary can monitor, evaluate and object to a trustee’s fee.
Are six sibling co-trustees too many cooks in the kitchen? Many California trust disputes arise from disagreements among sibling co-trustees over how to administer Mom and Dad’s trust after the parents have passed. They all have a strong sense of what Mom and Dad wanted, but they don’t agree on what it was. Thus, trust and estate litigators can be described as “sibling lawyers.”
A recent appellate opinion illustrates such co-trustee conflict and shows the unpredictability of our judicial process. In Trolan v. Trolan (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 939, the California Court of Appeal addressed issues of trust interpretation and trustee removal in a situation where five siblings were aligned against the sixth.
Can a disinherited person contest a trust amendment under California Probate Code section 17200? No, said the Court of Appeal last August in Barefoot v. Jennings (2018) 27 Cal.App.5th 1.
The Barefoot opinion put pending trust contests in jeopardy, as contestants typically have used section 17200 as the procedural hook to challenge trust amendments that disfavored them. Last week, however, the California Supreme Court granted review of Barefoot such that the opinion no longer has precedential value.